DAD:
"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead." (Oscar Wilde)
"A flower cannot live without sunshine and a man cannot live without love." (Max Mueller)
"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." (Mother Teresa)
"What we have once enjoyed we can never lose, all that we love deeply becomes a part of us." (Helen Keller)
"Choose your love. Love your choice." (Thomas S. Monson) *Mom used to say, "Make your choice and then love your choice" so I guess sometimes her quotes are just as good as the next guy!!!
MOM:
There are different levels of love you experience throughout life. Life is a binding cord that wraps itself around a person and holds that person together with the one that loves. Love of family, love of husband, children, grandchildren...all these different levels of love are held together with a binding cord. A cord that strengthens as one develops the capacity to love. The deepest love one has is for their spouse, their children and others. A woman's love for her husband has no bounds. Just being around him--the love they share between each other is close to the love we need to develop towards our Savior who loved us all so deeply that he gave us the gift of life and loved us so deeply that he offered up his life for us. This is life eternal. We need to develop this strong cord, this binding cord, that will encourage our love for each other and for the love of our Savior. The Savior has asked us to observe the law of perfect love, which is a universal and unconditional gift.
46 "For if ye a love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
48 a Be ye therefore b perfect, even as your c Father which is in heaven is d perfect." (Matthew 5:46-48)
Mom shared several examples of where the Savior showed love even to those others had deemed unloveable (the woman from Samaria, the publicans and tax collectors, the lepers, the Roman centurion) She also shared the example from the Ensign about Jean Val Jean from Les Miserables and how the preacher welcomed him despite his past with open arms because he was "his brother".
To love and serve our neighbors we purify our own hearts. Her prayer is that when the Lord gathers us at the last day that we will be recognized as having done service to the "least of these my brethren" and thereby service to our Savior. The gathering is going on now in preparation for the glorious return of the Son of God!
ELNORA:
There were two talks that I enjoyed "We Serve That Which We Love" by Marvin J. Ashton and "Agency and Love in Marriage" by Lynn G. Robbins. I'll share my favorite quotes from these two talks.
"We must choose carefully the areas in which we serve, because where we serve, there will be our love" (Ashton)
"What we learn to love can make or break our lives." (Ashton)
"Give a child an opportunity to work and contribute in the home, and his love of family will increase. As he is encouraged to give time and sacrifice to develop his talents--whether they be academic, music, drama, sports, leadership, or whatever--he will develop love for that which brings him success. Children will love those talents or possessions to which we encourage them to give time and effort." (Ashton)
"How can we decrease our love for things not for our best good? We must examine our lives, see what services we are rendering and what sacrifices are being made and then stop the expenditure of time and effort in these directions. If this can be managed, then that love will wither and die." (Ashton)
"While a person may 'fall in love' with a spouse by emotion, the husband or wife progress and blossoms in love by decision." (Robbins)
"I lift a warning voice to our people. We have moved too far toward the mainstream of society in this matter. Now, of course, there are good families. There are good families everywhere. But there are too many who are in trouble. This is a malady with a cure. The prescription is simple and wonderfully effective. It is love. It is plain, simple, everyday love and respect. It is a tender plant that needs nurturing. But it is worth all of the effort we can put into it." (Robbins, unless he was quoting someone)
To me love is more mental than physical. If you start focusing on the negatives about someone your feelings can move from love to disgust rather quickly. You see it all the time with divorces or people contemplating divorce. At one point their spouse could do no wrong and they were madly in love but as life moves along and human frailties become apparent it can become tempting to focus on everything and anything that is wrong and then feelings start to change and all of a sudden you think you have "fallen out of love". I agree with the statements made that love is a choice. Love is a decision and we need to choose to love each and every day!
ELENA:
I studied a talk by Elder Groberg "The Power of God's Love."
He says that "Filled with His love, we can endure pain, quell fear, forgive freely, avoid contention, renew strength, and bless and help others.
I remember hearing once that if I say I love God, but I have bad feelings toward a my fellowman than I don't really love God. To really love him that love extends to myself and others.
Elder Groberg asks Why does the simple phrase "I love you" evoke such universal joy? He says that it is because every person who comes to earth is a spirit son or daughter of God. Since all love emanates from God, we are born with the capacity and the desire to love and to be loved. One of the strongest connections we have with our pre mortal life is how much our Father and Jesus loved us and how much we loved Them. Even though a veil was drawn over our memory, whenever we sense true love, it awakens a longing that cannot be denied.
That seems a beautiful concept to me and made me feel sorrow for those children that walk among us and feel unloved. This is the reason they feel that. We all are seeking to make the connections we had before we came here. It made me determined to extend love to all I see, especially those who are harder to love.
He says also that trying to find lasting love without obeying God is trying to quench thirst by drinking from an empty cup--you can go through the motions, but the thirst remains. This to me is very applicable to our current trend of living together without marriage, homosexual marriage, promiscuity. They are drinking from an empty cup.
Obedience will always bring happiness and love into our lives. It has been so wonderful to see Morgan gain this love as she serves those on her mission. As we were able to see her on Christmas, we were overcome with the love and joy that you see in her face. Her countenance is just filled with God's love and she is sharing that with others. I know that as I am set apart in different callings, I am filled with a love for those that I am called to serve. I know that love is a natural extension of service.
NICHOLE:
Les Miserables says "To love another person is to see the face of God". I like that. We are made in his image and He tells us if we love Him, we will love and serve our fellowman! Anyway, I always get chills when I watch Les Miserables and hear that!
DEAN:
Didn't focus on our subject this time BUT....he got a job and we are all thrilled!!!!
DAVID:
"Oh Love, you can't explain it. Only a fool would try. I have this theory though..." Coach on Cheers.
Thats about right. Love is something that is unexplainable. It doesn't make any sense as to why certain people fall in love with one another. I think there are several different levels and types of love. There is love of family, activities, food, friends etc. There is the unconditional love that the Savior feels for each of us even though we sin and fall short of perfection. I would like to focus on spousal love.
I think true love is what husband and wives feel for each other. In order to spend 40-50 years living with the same person you must have a lot of love for that other person. I think a few things go into this.
Attraction: You must have some sort of physical attraction to the person you marry. As shallow as that sounds it is just something that needs to be there. Good thing there are still a few ladies that think bald is sexy.
Similar beliefs: I think this is important because if you do not believe the same things there is always going to be friction. I have heard the saying "Opposites attract but the only thing opposites attract is divorce". I am not saying that you have to like everything your spouse does, but on big things you had better be similar in the way you are thinking.
A desire for you spouses happiness. I believe that if you love someone you will do what you can to make them happy. You do nothing that will make them feel bad about themselves. No judging or treating them like they are second class citizens. You accept them for who they are and try to make them happy. I am not saying they always have to get their way. You will have disagreements with your spouse but those can be resolved without denigration of your spouse.
I think marriage is a full time job that it would only be worth it if you truly loved your spouse. If I do get married it will be because I am madly in love with my wife. I am not going to get married just to get married, (yes I know some of you think I should). It would not be fair to my wife to marry her if I truly wasn't in love with her. Have I ever been in love before? I think so but that love will pale when I meet the girl I am supposed to marry.
Some love songs that I recommend are "Love is a Battlefield" "Love Hurts" "Cant Help Falling in Love with You" and of coarse the classic ballad by ALF "Love Me or I will Spit on Your Lawn". Absolutely beautiful. (My kids love ALF...they will relate to this last comment!)
RACHEL:
Love has many meanings to me first is the love between a man and woman. We had great examples from dad and mom growing up. I never saw them yell, fight, talk of money in front of us kids. They always kissed, held hands, and played around. The one that I will always remember is when dad put a banana peel down moms shirt, and mom chasing dad around saying let's dance let's dance. I love that even if it was in front of my friends. It has made me love and appreciate what I have with Shane. We try not to argue in front of the kids we need to try harder not to talk about money in front of them. But I know they see the love that we have for each other and I hope when they get married they will have the same respect for their spouse. The other love is for children. My kids love me no matter what and I feel the same for them. I love the cuddle times together even now as they get older I get fewer but it's nice to see that they aren't embarrassed to still say I love you or ask for a hug in front of their friends. I always felt love in our home growing up it just felt very peaceful and I know our friends felt it to cause they always wanted to hang out at the Merrill's. I try to have that same love at my home. Last is the love that we have been given and shown these past few weeks with the house burning down I have gone through many emotions from sad to angry to lost to grateful and love. It's weird that you can have all those emotions at the same time. We have been shown love from family, friends, wards, neighbors, even strangers it's such a warm feeling to know people still care in this world.
Next week Mom wants us to answer the question "How do we reach our eternal destiny?" and she would like us to study and discuss with our spouse (if applicable) the talk "Face the Future with Faith and Hope" by M. Russell Ballard as printed in the Jan 2014 Ensign.
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